State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A23-0713

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Jimmie Lee Campbell,
Appellant.

Filed March 4, 2024
Affirmed
Connolly, Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-21-4141

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Thomas R. Ragatz, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul,
Minnesota; and

John J. Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Peter R. Marker , Assistant County Attorney, St.
Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)

Joseph G. Vaccaro, The Law Office of Joseph G. Vaccaro, PLLC, St. Paul, Minnesota
(for appellant)

Considered and decided by Connolly, Presiding Judge; Smith, Tracy M., Judge; and
Bratvold, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
CONNOLLY, Judge
Appellant challenges the denial of his motion to sup press evidence resulting from
execution of a search warrant on appellant and his vehicle because the application for that
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warrant contained the same information as the application for a warrant issued two weeks
earlier, and that information was therefore stale. We affirm.
FACTS
A video from April 28, 2021, showed a suspected drug sale between appellant
Jimmie Lee Campbell and T.K. T.K. and his girlfriend were in a 2006 Hyundai Sonata in
a gas station parking lot when appellant arrived in a 2011 Hyundai Veracruz registered to
appellant’s girlfriend, C.G. T.K. walked over to the Veracruz, got into it, and left after 13
seconds. Both cars then left the gas station. The video supported an application for a
search warrant of appellant and the cars signed by District Court Judge L.C. on June 30,
2021.
On June 24, 2021, law enforcement observed a Sonata parked outside a St. Paul
address registered to C.G.’s daughter. Appellant drove the Sonata, met with another car
that had been circling the area, back-tracked, parked without anyone leaving the car, used
back alleys, and circle d the area. On July 15, 2021, District Court Judge P.Y. signed the
application for another search warrant. Except for the second application stating that law
enforcement had made a great but unsuccessful effort to locate appellant and that T.K. had
died from the toxic effect of heroin and fentanyl, the applications for the two warrants were
identical.
On July 21, 2021, appellant was located in the Sonata and pulled over. A search of
appellant pursuant to the second search warrant produced 29 bindles of suspected heroin
and a baggie of suspected cocaine; a search of the vehicle he was driving produced a second
baggie of suspected cocaine, multiple tablets of suspected n arcotics, drug paraphernalia,
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multiple cell phones, and nearly $1,700 in cash. The 29 bindles totaled nearly 24 grams,
or over 200 doses, of heroin; the cocaine weighed roughly 2.1 grams; and the tablets were
counterfeit doses of buprenorphine hydrochlori de and oxycodone. Appellant was charged
with first -degree sale of drugs, second -degree possession of drugs, and fifth -degree
possession of drugs.
Appellant filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of the search.
The motion was denied. Appellant waived his right to a jury trial under Minn. R. Crim. P.
26.01, subd. 4, and submitted the case on stipulated facts, preserving his right to challenge
the denial of his motion to suppress . The parties agreed that the district court’s findings
could be based on the complaint; on exhibit 1, investigative reports and photographs; and
on exhibit 2, the July 15 search warrant and application.
Appellant was found guilty on all counts . He challenges his conviction s, arguing
that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress the evidence obtained when
the warrant was executed because the facts in the second warrant application, having been
used two weeks earlier in the first warrant application, were stale.
DECISION
1. Interpretation of Minn. Stat. § 626.15(a)(2022)
This court will “review questions of statutory interpretation de novo.” State v.
Defatte, 928 N.W.2d 338, 340 (Minn. 2019).
“[A] search warrant must be executed and returned to the court which issued it
within ten days after its date. After the expiration of this time, the warrant is void unless
previously executed.” Minn. Stat. § 626.15(a). Appellant argues that this “ten -day rule
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requires not only that a warrant be reapplied for after ten days, but that the subsequent
warrant application must allege new facts relevant to finding probable cause.” Appellant
provides no legal or rational basis for arguing that, unless a defendant can be apprehended
and a warrant can be executed within ten days, the facts supporting that w arrant become
too stale to support a second warrant.
In effect, appellant is asking this court to add language to a statute. But an appellate
court “cannot supply that which the legislature purposely omits or inadvertently
overlooks.” State v. Christensen, 901 N.W.2d 648, 653 (Minn. App. 2017). The fact that
the legislature did not choose to say that a prior warrant invalidates a second warrant based
on the same facts means that this court cannot say it either.
To support his motion to suppress in the d istrict court, appellant relied extensively
on a nonprecedential decision of this court , State v. Meyers , No. A03 -1267, 2004 WL
377003 (Minn. App. Mar. 2, 2004) (concluding that a second warrant had to allege new
facts to be valid). The district court effectively distinguished Meyers.
The Meyers court determined that the second affidavit
did not contain information from which a judge could make an
independent determination as to probable cause, as the only
difference between the two affidavits was the conclusory
statements. [Appellant] asks the Court to come to the same
conclusion in this case—that once a warrant expires under the
ten-day rule, new facts must be alleged to obtain a subsequent
warrant.
Importantly, however, the Meyers court did not stop its
analysis there. While it reasoned that the conclusory
statements of the second warrant application could not provide
probable cause, the court also looked to the overall contents of
the warrant to determine staleness. . . . Factors to be considered
in determining staleness include whether ther e is any
indication of ongoing c riminal activity, whether the articles
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sought are innocuous or incriminating, whether the property
sought is easily disposable or transferable, and whether the
items sought are of enduring utility.
In its analysis of staleness, the Meyers court’s reasoning
exposes the contradiction between the interpretation of the ten-
day rule advocated by [appellant], and the longstanding rules
for determining staleness recognized by Minnesota courts. . . .
The Meyers court acknowledges tha t there are types of
evidence sought whereby probable cause does not expire for
months . . . . If there are situations where probable cause can
endure for months on the same set of facts, it stands to reason
investigators do not necessarily need to provide new
information every ten days to reapply for a warrant.
The essence of the ten -day rule is to have warrants be
consistently re-evaluated for staleness. The rule does not exist
as a way to invalidate probable cause if investigators cannot
come up with new facts every ten days.

In his reply brief, appellant claims Meyers is “[t]he only case on point.” But Meyers
is not on point. In that case, “the information contained in the [second] search warrant
application established only a general suspicion of ongoing criminal activity” that was “not
sufficient to support a finding of probable cause.” Meyers, 2004 WL 333003, at *4. The
information here was far more specific.
2. Validity of the Search Warrant
An appellate court’s review of the validity of a search warrant “is limited, with great
deference afforded to the issuing court.” State v. Souto , 578 N.W.2d 744, 747 (Minn.
1998); State v. Rochefort , 631 N.W.2d 802, 804 (Minn. 2001) (noting that, while a
determination of whether probable cause existed to support a search warrant is reviewed
de novo, this court gives “great deference” to the issuing magistrate’s determination of
probable cause at the time of the warrant’s issue). “On review, we must determine whether
there was a substantial basis to conclude that probable cause existed.” State v. Holland ,
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865 N.W.2d 666, 673 (Minn. 2015) (quotation omitted). A substantial basis in this context
means a “fair probability,” given the totality of the circumstances, “that contraband or
evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place.” State v. Zanter, 535 N.W.2d 624,
633 (Minn. 1995) (quotation omitted); see also United States v. Garcia, 179 F.3d 265, 268-
69 (5th Cir. 1999) (“[F]air probability is something more than a bare suspicion, b ut need
not reach the fifty percent mark.”).
Appellant argues that the district court erred in determining that the evidence
presented in the application for the warrant was not stale, and relies on Souto (holding that
“the information supporting the app lication was stale.”). Souto, 578 N.W.2d at 745. But
Souto is distinguishable. In that case, “[a]t the time of the search warrant application, it
had been over six months since [the defendant’s] reported purchase of less than an ounce
of methamphetamine and since the last reported drug party” and “ [a]pproximately 10
months had transpired since the attempted delivery of the package containing a controlled
substance.” Id. at 750. Here, the application for the second warrant was made only 21
days after law enforcement’s observation of appellant’s suspected drug activity. The
district court did not err in concluding that the information in the warrant application was
not stale.
Affirmed.